Walking After Midnight Read Online Free PDF

car?“
    Her car, a used Celica hatchback, was parked to the right of the entrance. As it was the only car in the vast parking lot, it hadn’t required a feat of genius for him to figure out that it belonged to her. Apparently he realized that, too, because he didn’t even wait for her weak nod before pushing her toward it.
    The door clicked shut behind them, snuffing out the last sliver of artificial light. The only illumination now was provided by the moon, which was hidden from her sight by the ring of tall pines around the mortuary. A scattering of stars twinkled with incongruous cheeriness against the inky black of the predawn sky. A soft wind, warm and redolent with the scent of the pines, caressed her face. From underfoot, a low crunching sound marked their progress. The thousands of cicadas celebrated their rite of passage by shedding their skins, and the dried, brittle shells littered the ground like leaves in autumn. The feel of them shattering beneath her bare foot was unpleasant.
    Briefly, uselessly, Summer mourned the shoe left behind in the embalming room. Would its absence slow her down should she get a chance to run? She dismissed that thought with the contempt it deserved. If necessary, she would sprint barefoot over broken glass to escape the monster who held her hostage.
    „Get in.“
    They had reached her car, and with those words he thrust her against the passenger-side door, which was closed. Her hip made painful contact with the jutting handle before her ringers could grab hold and lift.
    Nothing happened.
    For an awful second that seemed to stretch as long as all eternity, Summer measured the size and scope of the acute danger in which she now found herself.
    „Are you deaf? I said get in.“
    „It’s locked.“
    „What?“
    „It’s locked.“
    „Unlock it, then.“
    „I – I don’t have the keys.“ Her voice quavered.
    „You don’t have the keys? Where the hell are they?“
    „Inside. In m-my purse. By the door.“
    He swore, filthy and threatening strings of oaths that were no less chilling because their low volume made them largely unintelligible. Summer didn’t even try to decipher most of the abuse he hissed at her as he dragged her back toward the mortuary. Stumbling in his wake, bent almost double by his grip on her hair, Summer tasted terror. It was sour on her tongue, like vinegar.
    She heard, rather than saw, the click as he tried and failed to turn the front-door knob. Click, click, click, click…
    „This door’s locked too.“
    Summer cringed.
    „Tell me you don’t have a key. Tell me the goddamned door’s locked and you don’t have a key. Tell me that the key to this door, and the keys to your car, are locked inside this goddamned building. Tell me. I dare you.“
    He had the situation summed up in a nutshell, but not for all the world would Summer have admitted it. She didn’t need to. He took her silence for the assent it was and let loose with a sound that was a cross between a growl and a snarl and put the fear of God into her.
    „I’m sorry! Please…“ she babbled as he jerked her upright so that they were suddenly eyeball to fearsome eyeball. Murder was written on his distorted face.
    The bright glare of headlights sliced through the darkness. A vehicle was turning into the private lane that led to the mortuary’s parking lot. Summer felt a wave of thankfulness so intense that it weakened her knees. Saved, she was saved.
    „Shit.“
    Not so fast. Deliverance was snatched from her grasp even as she embraced it. He ran, with a heavy, lumbering, almost crablike lope indicating, she hoped, that his left leg might be severely injured, around the corner of the building and dragged her with him by her accursed hair.
    As she stumbled in his wake, the two of them barely ahead of the pursuing headlights, a scream died in her throat without ever making it past her lips. His grip on her hair was unbreakable – and he still clutched the scalpel in his right